Storage Optimization

Primary disk storage is an expensive investment from both a capital and operations perspective. It is therefore vitally important to understand the value and near-term urgency of access for all information across your organization. Especially as prevailing research indicates that as much as 70% of an organization’s storage data is inactive (low or no touch). Movement of such data into an Alliance Storage Technologies NETArchive solution results in a significant reduction in storage expense and a dramatic increase in positive asset utilization and storage optimization.

Implementing the right data storage technology for the lifecycle of the information is the key to reducing business costs and risks.

Tier 1 Active (<30 days) and Semi-Active Business Data (<30-90 days) - data used for normal business operations (short-term data storage) should be stored on highly redundant disk arrays with high access and availability.

Tier 2 Backup Data - Tape and SATA disk solutions are excellent for backup strategies and provide quick capture of data in order to restore data on the disk arrays in the event of a disaster or other loss.

Alliance Storage Optimization Benefits

Preserving Data Unaltered – Alliance's solutions are based upon true Write-Once-Read-Many (WORM) optical technology. Encrypted data is written to optical media after which it becomes unalterable remaining intact for periods greater than 50 years.

Encryption – With this optional feature, data at-rest is encrypted with unique keys for each object using FIPS 140-2 compliant AES-256 encryption algorithm. Encryption adds another layer of security to your data enabling compliance with specific regulations and ensuring that all data remains confidential.

Transmission Security and Integrity – Alliance's NAS solutions integrate seamlessly with existing storage networks presenting as a standard TCP/IP resource with support for CIFS, NFS, and FTP protocols. The server security-administration ensures that it can recognize and approve validated clients.

Backup and Recovery – Archive libraries are capable of backing up all RMDB (Resource Manager Data Base), FSC (File System Catalog), HSM (Hierarchical Storage Manager) which significantly increases the speed of data recovery in the event of system failure.

Disaster Recovery - Optical media provides an affordable disaster recovery option as automatically duplicated media can be removed from libraries and stored off-site. The Replication feature of the Archive Appliance offers the ultimate in disaster recovery protection with duplicate libraries located in different physical locations providing constant access to data – the key to business continuity and high-availability.

Scalable/Expandable Archiving – Expandable optical disk archive systems are based upon high-capacity media magazines and scalable robotic libraries. As data storage requirements increase, libraries can be easily expanded within the same footprint offering investment protection through capacity expansions and future-proof system upgrades.

Case Studies

Citistreet”We were accumulating large amounts of data which required on-line storage in our production systems. The majority of this data was accessed very infrequently, if at all, but was being kept due to business needs...This on-line data was increasing the capacity needs of the disk subsystems. In addition to disk space, this data was being backed up every week during full system backups. This caused the backup window to increase to the point of being unusable, and would require large capital outlays for additional hardware and backup media. As a result, a near-line archiving solution was required.” - Jeff Machols – Systems Integration Manager. Click to read case study.

Loyens & Loeff“The Plasmon UDO Archive Appliance matched our business and technical email archive requirements. We calculated that installing a Plasmon archive could save us more than 280,000 Euros over the next five years when compared to our current EMC storage. This saving is achieved through lower purchase and operating costs and since the Archive Appliance uses very stable UDO media it also eliminates the need for archive backup. This saves us money, but also reduces our backup window and IT resource.” Kees Sprangers, Sr. Systems Engineer. Click to read case study.

With over 17,000 data archive systems installed worldwide, see if an Alliance system is right for you.